The paradox of silence and ‘dark swoops’: unmooring women’s language in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun

Abstract

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun is set during the harrowing period of the contentious Biafran War. This novel delves into the bifurcated destinies of the Igbo twins, Olanna and Kainene. My study seeks to unravel African women’s articulation of trauma and its silencing effects through elucidating unmoored language. Even though Adichie writes in the Anglophone medium, her writing I argue, speaks directly from its localised African context. Half of a Yellow Sun is intrinsically framed via a narrative animated by women-centric lenses. It negates hegemonic historiographies which have long suppressed the memorialisation of Biafra, by muting marginalised voices, including those of women. Adichie’s unmoored writing, I contend, enables the paradox of women’s internalised vocalisations to arise, attaining audibility, despite being restrained by a leitmotif of silence and enveloped in the depression of ‘dark swoops’. Half of a Yellow Sun foregrounds Adichie’s homage to the silenced of Biafra and demonstrates how unmoored language articulates trauma in African women’s literature.